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All Rise...

Some people ask Judge Kerry Birmingham why he dresses in black, why he never wears bright colors on his back...because he's a damn judge, that's why. Can't you read?

The Charge

Hello, he's Johnny Cash.

The Case

Another biopic, another slew of tie-in DVDs. Piggybacking on the recent
big-screen treatment of the life of singer Johnny Cash, Walk the Line, comes this quickie
documentary retrospective on the tumultuous life of the "Ring of Fire"
and "Folsom Prison Blues" singer. It's cheap, slapdash, and
suspiciously lacking any of Cash's music. Luckily for its producers, none of
this matters altogether too much: it's Johnny Cash, for God's sake.

Attempting to encapsulate the life of Johnny Cash in just under an hour,
Johnny Cash: The Man in Black, begins with Cash's impoverished childhood
as an Arkansas sharecropper and moves briskly through the highs and lows of his
life and career. All of the usual stops are there for anyone who's read either
of Cash's autobiographies, Man in Black and Cash, or even just
seen Walk the Line: rise, marriage, addiction, love, failure, and
comeback. Listing it like that, like a Behind the Music checklist, robs
the life of Cash of any nuance, as does the documentary's rote, chronological
run through his life. The narration takes us from his days in Memphis during the
infancy of Sun Records through the peaks of his '60s hits, through his recurring
addiction to pills, his movie and television career, his '80s decline, and
late-life comeback via Rick Rubin's American Recordings. All of these events are
presented with little commentary and pause for reflection. A man's life boiled
down to a basic recap. This is the cheap documentary equivalent of a grade
school book report. Despite the lack of insight, Timeless Media, faced with no
budget and obviously no participation from Cash's estate or his label, do what
they can to remain visually dynamic and evocative of the man and his music.
Local news anchor-like narration tie the segments together as the camera slowly
zooms in or pans across still photographs. Time periods and events are
represented by stock footage. Music distinctly in the style of Cash takes
the place of actual Cash songs. Interviews break up the proceedings, sometimes
with folks who have genuine ties to the man himself (such as affable country
music producer Jack Clement) but more often with tenuously related authors,
historians, record company executives, and showbiz types (including, somewhat
randomly, singer Judy Collins).

That the story gets told with minimal intrusion from these limitations is a
credit to the filmmakers; that they made this movie at all is not. It's
opportunistic, to say nothing of redundant, to put together this Cliffs Notes
retrospective of what is an already (justifiably) well-documented life. There's
a reason Walk the Line ends the story in the 1960s, and it's not for lack
of material. It's an impressive, ultimately empty bit of sleight of hand:
telling the story of a man's life without directly addressing that life at
all.

Technically, The Man in Black is unremarkable. The stereo sound is
serviceable, since crisper narration would be the only difference on a digital
track, especially considering the lack of Cash's music. A warning before the
disc's main menu warns about the film quality of the source materials used in
the documentary, but this is negligible given the time periods discussed and the
retrospective nature of the movie. Two featurettes, "Origins of
Country" and "The Fifties" offer context for Cash and his point
of view. Featuring the same narration and repeating some of the interview
footage from the feature, these appear to be cut, slightly reconfigured segments
from the movie, probably (and rightly) excluded from the main body of the film
for their tangential nature, though their inclusion here does provide some
illuminating background, particularly for youngsters like myself who weren't
alive during the periods discussed.

The Man in Black is probably ideal for those whose curiosity is
piqued by the current blockbuster and want to know more; anyone else will find
the proceedings cheap, exploitive, and unilluminating. Cash enthusiasts should
look elsewhere for more comprehensive, definitive material on the Man in Black
and not be swayed by this dashed-off cash-in.